


Calico

by Artherra



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Cats, Gen, author STILL hasn't leared how to write tags, badass beanie squad, no beta we die in panic, there's a lot happening with cats, tw gun injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 22:43:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18397850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artherra/pseuds/Artherra
Summary: North was just watching them. Just watching. Absolutely not breaking into their house and stealing their pets right from under their noses. No, sir.In her defense, said illegal act hadn't been a part of her plans for that night at all.





	Calico

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt-fill from my tumblr that turned out to be much longer than expected, so I'm posting it here too fhkjkvghkchgjcfgj  
> also it is my first attempt at comedy so proceed with caution, it is unbetaed except for grammarly saving my ass here and there.  
> original prompt was "This isn't what it looks like."
> 
> written for Nate, ily
> 
> I'll write ch2 someday, i promise

North was just watching them. Just watching. Absolutely not breaking into their house and stealing their pets right from under their noses. No, sir.

In her defense, said illegal act hadn't been a part of her plans for that night at all. 

She's just been spending her free time the usual way - which meant stalking small anti-android groups, a hobby that made her feel both productive and useful in a way none other hobbies did.

(Besides shooting things, which Markus disapproved of, as it apparently ruined the "aesthetic" of New Jericho to have gunshots going off at night. Clearly, even with his fashion sense, Markus had no sense for _true_ aesthetic.)

The group she chose to observe that day called themselves the True Humanity. It was a really small group - nothing nearly comparable to the gangs that Cyberlife attracted to itself, or the terrorist groups that tried to snipe Markus every few months. Definitely not similar to the workings of the BIOR (Blood is only red) group, Detroit's biggest anti-android establishment that Markus was semi-forced to tolerate for the time being, even if their protesters swarmed Jericho 24/7. 

True Humanity was not some masterminds' strategic plan to overthrow the android movement. Not even a boycott or a protest. 

It just looked like a band of teenagers with nothing else to do.

She had been standing outside on the street, leaning against the wall, in front of their meeting point, a small, semi-collapsed shack of a house, when she overheard the conversation.

It was between two of the teenagers, the one leading the group and its member, smoking outside in front of the porch. North had been watching them for some time, choosing her place so that the shadows were in just the right position for it to be unlikely that they'd notice her. 

They didn't really talk about anything interesting, spent 15 minutes bickering about sports alone.  
But just as she was losing patience and itching to go and see if there was something else happening in the house, she heard one of them curse and start in a different tone.

"Damn fucking bitch won't stop making more kittens. I swear, one more time and I'll shoot it, right between the eyes." He glanced towards the open door of the house. 

The other followed his gaze, before taking a drag of the cigarette and asking, smoke flying off his tongue. "You still having trouble with the cat?"

"Yeah. Gonna drown the new ones today."

North system stuttered. They _what?_

"Why do you even keep that cat, dude. Can't you just...shoot it already or dump it on the street?"

The leader's answer was quiet. He stared into the ground, voice slightly pained. "It was my brother's."

"Oh," the other replied, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "What...what exactly happened to him?"

The leader took a while to answer. "He...he was near Hart Plaza the day those plastic bastards decided they needed their freedom and vandalized the place."

North scoffed to herself but continued listening. It wasn't the worst she'd heard.

"He tried to run away, but the military mistook him for an android. He...didn't make it."

_Oof._ It never occurred to her, but really, how was the military supposed to know who was and wasn't a deviant? She didn't care at that time, either.

How many casualties were there? Nobody mentioned any at the meetings.

The leader took a breath and turned around when he received no reaction other than a mumbled "I'm sorry," from his accomplice, ending the conversation.

"You're right though, I should just shoot the cat. No reason for it to stay here, It'll be basically mercy." He nodded to himself, straightening up. 

"Gonna shoot the kittens to while we're at it, I don't really feel like going to the river."

North's insides twisted in disgust.

She knew humans could be brutal to creatures that they considered below themselves; the acts against androids spoke for themselves just how far they'd go.

But kittens? Why would they drown kittens? There was a multitude of other things they could do that would not require such a brutal (and illegal) action. Hell, shelters still existed and all they needed was to wait until morning.

She didn't know much about pets, not many androids did, but from what she knew from Connor, humans were usually pretty fond of them. More than fond, in some cases. They were family members, even more than androids used to be (oh, how bitter she was about that.)

"You wanna help?" The other dude asked, absolutely unconcerned. 

The leader shrugged. "If you want to."

North's spine went cold. Of course. _Of course._

She should've guessed that people who saw no issue in gunning androids in the street would see no issue in shooting a _helpless fucking kitten_.

She watched as they retreated into the house, complaining about the lack of light. The absence of street lamps in the less funded parts of Detroit was actually something that went in her favor, now more than ever.

She was just supposed to watch. Connor allowed her to stalk them with only that one condition, and North initially saw no problem with it.

Now, she was on her own thin ice.

There was no reason to save that cat. None, really. A few lost kittens wouldn't make the world crash and burn. 

But it nagged at her. G-ddamn empathy.

A door shut and the two teenagers came out again, a third member dragging behind. The leader carried a gun, an old rifle from the year 2027.   
Quite the punch, but without the reloading speed.  
She had to say it was a good gun when you're fighting androids in the streets. 

The leader was explaining how the gun works to what she assumed was a new member. They were all completely caught up in their conversation, not paying attention to anything else.

She was so close. Given that she was an android, locating the cat and taking it away without being noticed would be a breeze. She'd just take it to the closest vet and-

Ah, yes. 2:34:27 AM. She'd take it to New Jericho then, just for the night. 

Okay, okay. She could do it.

Only then she realized that she had really started planning.

_I'm really doing this, huh?_

Fuck Connor. She's saving a life today whether he likes it or not.

She sneaked around the fence, careful to evade detection. Thankfully, it was second nature to her from the minute she became deviant. At last, the days of constantly running and hiding like a coward were actually good for something.

As far as she was aware, True Humanity only had three members, but she'd never seen the newcomer before. Which brought the number to four and meant that one more person was inside, probably sleeping. 

She assumed they were awake. Rather assume the worst and then later find out it was better than the other way around.

She went around the back of the house, finding all of the lights off. It wasn't a problem to her; one more advantage she had to herself was night-vision. 

(Not all androids had it, but it was standard equipment for sexbots, of course, because how else were they supposed to find the dick in the dark? Echolocation?)

She took out her knife and opened the window to what seemed to be the kitchen and climbed inside, her night vision protocols automatically loading.

The place was a _mess._

Did humans really live like this? 

The first thing that hit her was the smell; burned food, mold and sweat, oppressing and stuck to every surface.

It was a sight to behold - trash everywhere, clothes and wrappers laying on the ground making her movement unnecessarily difficult and dirty dishes in the sink that she doubted were ever touched. Anti-android banners and posters covered the walls. The room was large; a kitchen connected to the living area; making her able to see the lights on the porch through the window on the other side of the room, above the couch repurposed as a bed.

She checked the couch for the fourth member while she made her way to the door. Wherever he was, it wasn't there.

She avoided stepping on the wrappers and moved over to the hall, adjusting her audio units and listening for any sign of a human presence. 

She heard meowing instead.

It came from the other side of the hallway. She crouched at the door, hearing the conversation outside, and moved in the direction of the tiny sounds to the small space in the darkness in front of her.

She saw the cat's bright, reflective eyes staring back at her.

Half across the hallway, her units picked up other sounds, human breathing. It was coming from behind the wall, slowed down and deep; definitely from a sleeping person.

She knew the sound well enough; it was something that androids simulated quite well while in rest mode and she was awfully known for watching her friends sleep, paranoid and insomniac as she was.

The floorboards creaked softly, but she doubted human ears would pick that up.

The cat started hissing when she finally came close enough to touch and North realized that she actually had no idea how to handle a cat with kittens. Well, too late to stop now.

She recalled what Connor did when he wanted to pet a dog on the street and simulated the movement, curling her fingers and reaching out towards the cat.

It recoiled at first, but eventually leaned forward and sniffed her hand. Hissed again, this time quieter. Wary, not aggressive.

North finally noticed the kittens, four fluffy, breathing balls curled next to the cat. They were smaller than her own hand; their ears stuck to their heads and limbs short. She had only used to word three times in her life, but she had to say that it was, as humans said, really fucking cute.

Humans' ability to murder kept surprising her. Androids, their own, children, pets? They didn't care. They would murder everything if it got them what they wanted. Or even, if it just got rid of a problem for them.

(It had actually been what made her stop wanting to murder. Realizing that she could be better than them. After that realization, only then was she able to see what of an extraordinarily strong being Markus was. Murder was the easy way out; it took a lot of strength to avoid it.)

She reached, slowly and hesitantly, for one of the kittens, feeling tears in her eyes when she actually touched the tiny, warm body, felt the fast heartbeat and the weak breaths. How could anybody cut the lives of these creatures short? And even worse, how could they choose to?

She couldn't see the kitten's colors as her night-vision was nowhere as sophisticated as Connor's, but she knew they were beautiful. Tri-colored, by the way how some parts of them appeared darker.

She looked around for anything that she could carry the cats in, noticing a rectangular cardboard box lying on the side of the hallway. She reached for it, emptied it of the never-opened books, and laid it in front of her. 

The cats watched her while she took off her jacket and placed it inside the box to create some cushioning.

Now, the hard part.

North didn't know how to handle cats. She never actually met one before, only knew how they looked and what they did, but the actual presence of one and the overall situation made her anxious.

She reached with a whispered "sorry" and lifted the animal with both of her hands, ignoring the way it scratched her synthetic skin in protest, causing drops of thirium to drip down her fingers.

The much easier transport of the kittens began as soon as she laid the cat down into the impromptu container. North hoped their meows, quite loud with the way her audio sensitivity was set on high, wouldn't alert any of the four members.

She was well aware the conversation outside stopped, but currently powerless to do anything about it.

The door opened while she was still holding the fifth kitten in midair. Her thirium pump jumped fair beyond parameters.

"What the fu-"

With the changed audio-sensitivity, the gunshot was loud enough to rattle her processor as a bullet went through her right shoulder. Warnings exploded in her vision, huge and assaulting, but all she cared about was finally closing the cardboard box and getting the fuck out.

The leader of the group stood in the light coming from the main door, gun aimed, his accomplices behind him.

"Oh, my g-d! And android!"

It was really time to _go._

The door to the kitchen area was on the other side of the wall, the dude standing directly in front of it. Which left one option.

She picked up the box and broke into the other bedroom, almost falling as she stumbled into a mattress. The fourth member was there, waking up from his slumber, still obviously groggy and not exactly aware of what was going on.

She vaulted over him, trailing thirium behind her and broke the window to the outside, calibrating her leap with the safety of the cats and then jumping through.

The fall was rough for her, she could survive much more than a kitten could.

She picked herself up and started running in the direction she originally came from, knowing where the street allowed her to get to the roof.

Several gunshots rang off behind her, these only hitting the cement wall. Splinters rained down on the sidewalk.

"You fucking bitch-" the leader screamed at her, taking aim and missing again.

Excellent vocabulary there, mister.

She turned a corner and found the ladder, climbing to the roof of the abandoned apartment building.

She immediately set course to New Jericho, only then realizing that there was no way she could make it through the main door like this.

First, there were the protesters. Second, one of the leaders of Jericho just randomly showing up in the middle of the night covered in blue blood is prone to scare some of their own poor, poor people. Third, Markus was probably still awake and she was not nearly okay enough to hear whatever bullshit he'd have to say.

Her own room in New Jericho was inaccessible from the roof; she made that choice so that nobody could sneak up at her and try to kill her while in rest mode. Markus' room was the same case and even if it was accessible, she wouldn't even think of it.

Which left the one and only room which she could use. Connor's.

Connor got the ridiculously small room after everybody picked out their own, elaborating on his choice to wait and see by the claim that he wouldn't be in Jericho much anyway, which turned out to be true. North didn't know much about where he actually went or spend the nights at, but the only days he made sure he was in New Jericho were saturdays. 

It was thursday. So, no Connor.

She stumbled several times while on her way to the building, her thirium pump skipping a beat each time. The cats had to make it. Had to.

She knew the thirium loss was making her partly delirious, but it was still concerning when time stopped working how it was supposed to, her awareness fading in and out as her processors tried to cope with the sudden losses of power.

But she made it in under 30 minutes. That was good.

Connor's window wasn't easy to open, the action much more difficult by her hands growing uncoordinated from the unsteady power flow, but she managed to pry it open and started climbing through, cradling the box to her chest with one hand and using the other to stabilize herself.  
Getting her leg through the frame without completely destroying Connor's special flowers was harder than all the other times she'd done this, but she made it eventually. 

The sound of somebody clicking off a gun's safety went off.

She froze and stared into the dark, trying to find the source, while her processor struggled to give her prompts of what to say and produced one heap of utter garbage. 

"This isn't what it looks like!"

Okay, North. That was definitely words.

What did it even look like? She was covered in blood, one leg in the room with the other still outside, clinging to a box full of cats like if her life depended on it _and_ she just attempted to break into New Jericho through the room of its _Security counselor_ of all people.

"North?!" Connor's voice. Fuck.

Only then her processor realized that yes, Connor mentioned that he's gonna be finishing some work on thursday. Damn.

The lights turned on. Connor was standing in front of the door, which was still ridiculously close to her; the room itself was more like a tiny pantry than anything that could be lived in, anyway. 

His gun was already down, but she knew he had been aiming right at her head a few seconds before. His LED finally lighted up, going to yellow. 

He was worried, she could tell, but she doubted she ever saw him so confused in the entire time she'd known him.

"What- did you get _shot?!_ " There it was.

North tried to get her other leg through the window. "...a little."

"A _little?!_ "

"Okay, actually a bit lot." Words, North. _Words._

Connor rushed to help her, basically pulling her out of the window and helping her stand.

"There's blood fucking everywhere, North, what the-," he glanced over at the windowsill, " _my plants!_ "

North honestly hadn't considered that she was still dripping thirium everywhere and that thirium was highly toxic. Ah well.

"My G-d," Connor turned to her, his gestures unusually expressive. "What the fuck is going on? North, _what did you do?!_ "

She wasn't sure if her processor was that fucked up from the thirium loss but it sure was producing garbage instead of meaningful sentences. 

"Cat. I...stole a cat," she held up the box, "uh, more like, five cats."

_"What?!"_

And that was the moment the cat decided to investigate the outside, pulling a black paw through a hole in the box and meowing loudly.

Connor stared at her, mouth slightly open, but he didn't say anything. Just stared as if in some kind of shock, his eyes darting from North to the cat and back to her. He didn't move. His eyes were still wide.

She shouldn't be proud of it, but Simon sure did owe her 10 dollars now that _she_ was the one who made Connor bluescreen. Their ongoing bet was silly yet challenging, as Connor never fell speechless when he was supposed to react, always knew what to do next and what to say.

Until now, apparently.

She itched to do something, realizing that she had been staring right back at him and also hasn't moved, as if they were stuck in a staring contest unaware.

Connor moved first, shifted his weight, his expression not changing. "...okay." His voice was strained.

"Can I…?" She gestured at the box and then the desk, getting a nod in response.

She left him standing there and laid the box on the desk, sighing in relief when she found that all of the kittens survived. The cat immediately tied to jump out and North didn't blame it, given that the time it spent in the box wasn't exactly a relaxing experience. 

North couldn't scan and even if she could, she wasn't sure if scanning animals for injuries would be available. She surveyed the net and tried to work with what she got, still coming up too short for her liking.

She hadn't even realized Connor moved to stand next to her until he leaned over, his LED went yellow, scanning. His calm facade was back.

"You _will_ tell me how the fuck this happened, but for now, let's take care of these," he reached forward and let the cat, currently sitting on the table, sniff his hand. "You should be glad that I started taking veterinary courses."

North turned to him. "You what?"

"I'm pretty sure the message I conveyed was clear. Did the blood loss damage your auditory units?"

There was the Connor she knew. Cold, stone-faced, sarcastic _bastard._

"Fuck you," she snapped back, getting a grin in response.

He straightened up, his expression going back to neutral. "They're all dehydrated and haven't been cared for for quite a while, but I don't see anything serious. They can stay here for the night and I can drive them to the nearest shelter tomorrow. The cat isn't chipped, so I think it should find a good home fast."

She was surprised at herself when her mind recoiled at the thought. "No."

"What?"

" _Mine,_ " her voice was louder than she expected. "Mine now."

"Come again?" His eyebrows rose up.

"I'm keeping them."

"North, are you sure? Do you even know how to care for a cat?"

"No," she began, "but I almost died for them! I'm not giving them back to the humans!"

He thought it over. "North...why exactly did you steal them? I thought you went to investigate the True Humanity group."

"I did. And this was never my plan, but the dude said he was going to shoot them and I just...i just couldn't let him do it."

She saw the fire rise in Connor's eyes. She almost expected him to be shocked, but he was a detective after all; he saw what humans could do to each other, what they could do to androids. 

And if there was something she knew that made the detective angry, it was the mistreatment of helpless animals.

"So," his voice was firm. He was, indeed, fucking mad.   
"They shot you? Because you broke into their house to save these?"

She nodded, looking back at the kittens. They _were_ tri-colored, her search identifying the coloring as calico, except for one, which was fully black. 

She met eyes with the mother cat and she noted their color - copper-brown, whiskey at the edges.

Connor was rubbing his hands together, his LED yellow. "Don't worry about the law, I'll cover it for you."

She nodded again, trying not to show her relief. "Thanks."

"Do you have anything to do tomorrow? I'd rather get to the vet as soon as possible."

North crossed her hands. "When did _you_ get the right to command me about this?" she teased.

Connor straightened and put his hands behind his back, a habit he still hasn't let go. "North, you don't know how to care for a cat and these will need more than what you can google. I want to help."

" _Sure,_ " she chuckled. "You're just a sap."

His expression dropped. He actually looked hurt as he stared on the ground. 

"Fine! You're co-owning them."

His eyes lighted up instantly. It was pure excitement, which was also something she didn't see on him often.

"So, 6am tomorrow?" She asked.

He nodded. "I'm not letting you off the hook about breaking into the house of an anti-android group just yet, but this is way more important."

Connor reached for one of the kittens, petting it with extremely careful movements. "I'm going to order the supplies shortly, but I'll wait on your input if you have color preferences and such."

"Yeah," she said, opening a connection and sending the information.

She lifted her hand, intending to fix her hair, frowning when she noticed it was covered in blue. Ah, yes, bullet wound. 

She looked down on the floor, relief washing over her when she noticed the thirium loss was much weaker as her self-repair systems kicked into gear. The floor had quite a lot of bloody footprints, though. Connor hadn't noticed yet. She should leave before he does.

"I...I think I'm gonna go get repairs now."

"You should be glad it didn't hit anything important," Connor said with a slight frown as he looked at her.

"I am."

She hesitated for a while. "Take care of them, okay? I'm gonna be back in an hour or two."

"Of course. "He replied with a nod and a smile.

She nodded back and gave the cats a last look before she turned and left through the door. 

She noticed Markus incoming from the other side of the hallway, doing his typical waltz-walk. They met eyes. If she won't leave now, he _will_ notice.

_Not today, sir._

Too many things happened. Too much new.

She turned in the other direction and sped up, hoping he wouldn't notice the blue footprints she was leaving behind.


End file.
